Adding Daddy
by W.H. Woolhat
Summary: Vimes reflects on something that Sybil told him in 'The Fifth Elephant'...and you don't have to have read the book to get it.


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"Can I have your attention for a couple of minutes?…I really need to talk to you very quietly for a little while without you running off after werewolves." [Sybil] said it as if it was a minor character flaw, like a tendency to leave his boots where people could trip over them.

"Er…they run after me_," [Vimes] pointed out._

"But there's always people being found dead or trying to kill you –"

"I don't ask_ them to, dear."_

"Sam, I'm going to have a baby."

(From The Fifth Elephant_, pp. 334-335)_

Sam Vimes sat in his office in the Watch House, listening vaguely to the sounds of the city outside his window. He still couldn't believe it. His initial reaction to Sybil's pregnancy had been justified, of course; he had just spent the day running away from werewolves, so the news, obviously, caught him completely by surprise. But now…now it seemed like he should be doing some hard thinking.

Hard thinking was not something that Vimes particularly liked doing. His line of work required chasing first and asking questions later. The thinking part always seemed to come after the suspect was in the cells. Of course, that was one of the problems. Sometime, sooner than Vimes was ready for, there would be a little Vimes running around, messing diapers and demanding to be fed. How was he supposed to keep up being Commander Vimes and leave Sybil at home with a baby all day, every day, and most nights?

One of the things that was puzzling Vimes was, well, that Sybil was going to have a baby in the first place. How often were the two of them actually home, together, at the same time, at night? Vimes couldn't recall the last time he had even gotten all the way through a dinner with Sybil without being interrupted by one of the lads from the Watch, asking him to go down to the Watch House or oversee something or come and look at a dead body. But then, though Vimes was no midwife, he knew that one night at home, just one, could mean the difference between a couple and a family.

But how was he going to handle it? Sybil would be a wonderful mother. She was caring and kind and could cook with just the right amount of burnt crunchy bits. _And what am I?_ Vimes wondered. He thought for a moment and finally supposed that he was a cold, suspicious, cynical old bastard. Officially, of course, he was Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, his Grace, the duke of Ankh-Morpork. Still, title or no, what kind of example would he be able to set for a kid?

He was going to be a father. Vimes stopped; he wasn't sure he could deal with that just yet. He tried again.

There was a baby. No, not even that, there was going to be a baby. Yes, that, Vimes felt, he could handle, for the moment anyway. So there was going to be a baby, and it was going to be Sybil's. And his. It was strange, as Vimes had always thought of himself as the last of the Vimes line. If the baby was a girl, that would still be true. But what if it was a boy? What if there was a Sam Jr., and he grew up to be just like his father…

Vimes shuddered. He supposed that the thing bothering him most about the whole baby business was that he would be a bad father. He knew he wasn't a good person. That went without saying. The city demanded that he not be a good person. But going from bad person to good father was not going to be an easy transition. Hell, chasing criminals most of the time and changing diapers the rest…how on the Disc was he going to manage that?

There was no point in talking to anyone about it. They would all encourage him, and that wouldn't help. Vimes knew that, no matter how many assurances people gave him that he was going to do fine, that he was a good man and a great leader (Carrot would say something like that, no doubt), he was going to need something more before his mind was settled. What Vimes really felt he needed was a drink, but that was, and always would be, out of the question. He sighed and lit a cigar instead.

No, the only thing that was going to settle his mind was if someone sat him down and said something like, "Sam, this is going to be hard, it's going to take work, it's going to be the biggest change of your life…" Something that would assure him that he wasn't going to be the perfect parent at first. Stumbling through blind was something that Vimes knew how to do. If people assured him of that, he would be fine. He didn't need people telling him that he was going to do a wonderful job, because he wasn't. The world didn't work like that. The world, Vimes knew, was a place full of misleading information and people who would sell you seasoned rat intestines and call it sausage.

Ankh-Morpork was really no place for a kid. Most of the kids that Vimes usually saw were the killing kind, those thugs that Carrot organized into football teams. Those were the kids on the streets; Vimes didn't know about the kids in the houses. He wasn't even quite sure if there were kids in the houses. Ankh-Morpork just didn't seem like a "kid" kind of city. It tended to breed people like Foul Ole Ron, Lord Rust, and, Vimes thought with a shudder, himself.

Sybil would have to handle teaching the kid to be a gentleman, or a lady. Vimes was terrible at high-class-ness, and he was proud of it. Of course, it wouldn't help for him to be spreading his general dislike of all things that walked upright – and some that just crawled around in gutters – to the next generation. Or maybe it would. Vimes shook his head. If thinking about fatherhood was this confusing, how bad would the actual thing be?

With a sigh, Vimes stood up. Maybe a walk around the city would clear his mind. But, for now, he figured it was time to resign himself to the fact that he was Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, his Grace, the duke of Ankh-Morpork…and he was going to have to add Daddy to the list.

THE END


End file.
